Hollow
by WriterExtraordinaire
Summary: Sam Winchester has an eating disorder.


**_A/N: _**_This was inspired by the fanfiction Brittle by sammehsam on livejournal. _

Throughout his life, Sam had watched his brother, Dean, date many girls. Most of them were just one night stands, girls he met at whatever restaurant or bar he was spending the evening. Most of the time, _he_ went home with_ them_. Living with his father and younger brother, he couldn't really do much if he ever brought them back to whatever motel room his family was staying in that week. There were a few girls that he actually spent more than one night with, but even those girls never really stood out in Sam's mind. There were almost as many of them as there were one-nighters. In fact, at times, he got the two mixed up. He never knew who was who. He never really cared about any of them enough to bother to find out either.

Except one.

This girl had long dark hair and eyes that could never make up their mind as to whether they wanted to be green or brown. She was short for her age and very thin. Thin as a rail. There were times Dean joked he was afraid he was going to snap her in half. Sam, only thirteen at the time, often thought that this was a very real concern.

For a long time, she wasn't anything special in Sam's mind. She was just another girl his brother spent most of his free time with. She just happened to be extra beautiful and extra thin. However, as time went on and she spent more and more time with Dean, Sam began to notice things about her he hadn't noticed about any of the other girls Dean had been with. Like how rarely he saw her eat. Or the fact she had as many thin white scars crisscrossing up and down her arms as he and his brother had across their entire bodies. While theirs came from the creatures they hunted, something told Sam that her scars were the result of a different sort of battle, one he couldn't ever hope to truly understand and really didn't want to.

One night, Dean brought the girl back to their motel room. Sam was in the bathroom and heard them come in. He heard the noises that he'd become familiar with because of his brother's occasional inability to remember he shared this room with two other people: lips connecting, soft gasps, a moan. But then it all stopped. The next gasp he heard wasn't one of pleasure, and then, after a moment, he heard sobbing. Unable to contain his curiosity any longer, Sam opened the door a crack and saw the two of them sitting on the bed, neither of them wearing a shirt, facing away from him.

The girl was saying something and Dean was rubbing her back, though Sam wasn't entirely sure you could even call it that. It looked more like the rungs of a jungle gym. He watched for a moment as the girl cried and Dean tried to soothe her, saying soft words over and over again. The jealousy that arose within him whenever he saw another girl with his brother simmered down and died in that instant as he began to realize why she was so thin and what the scars on her arms meant.

It was only shortly after he witnessed this that Dean came home shaking, his hands clenched into fists, tears in his eyes. For a whole twelve hours, Sam didn't know why, but when he got to school the next morning and the announcements started with, "Last night one of our own was taken away from us…" he knew what had happened.

For two years, the girl was on his mind every day. He tried to remember her name, but he couldn't. He thought about asking Dean about her, but he didn't dare. He tried to figure out why she did what she had, but it made no sense.

For two years.

Then high school started and the weight of the world settled on his shoulders. Everything became too much. And so one morning, he decided to skip breakfast. He decided to skip lunch, too. And dinner. It was painful. His stomach growled, begging for food every second he gave it none, but when he went to bed that night, long after their father had passed out on the couch and Dean had taken the best bed, he smiled.

For the first time in his life, Sam Winchester felt in control.

Sam Winchester was ten years old when he realized the feelings he had towards his brother _weren't_ the kind he should have.

He figured it out when he caught his fourteen-year-old brother kissing a girl with a bow in her short blonde hair at the park near their motel.

Dean had complained about taking Sam to the park, but their father was busy and he needed them out of the room for a while. Sam said they could go to the mall instead, but that was much farther away than the playground and Dean figured if they got to the park quickly, they wouldn't have to spend much time there. Sam promised he would be quick. It wasn't as if he had anyone to play with anyway. He could do everything once and then they would leave. Dean nodded, plopping himself down on one of the blue metal benches that dotted the edges of the playground to wait for his brother.

As promised, Sam was quick. He scaled the jungle gym only once and didn't linger at the top like he normally did. He went down both of the slides just as quickly. When he got to the swings, he decided to chance a glance over his shoulder at his brother…and saw the girl with the bow and the blonde hair. She was smiling at Dean and Dean was smiling back. There was something in his expression that Sam didn't like. He wished the girl would go away. But she didn't. She sat down next to Dean and talked to him for too long.

Sam went back to the jungle gym and this time went up slowly. He tried doing a few tricks on the metal bars in an attempt to grab his brother's attention. Maybe if he looked like he was going to fall, he would stop talking to that girl and they could leave.

Suddenly, the playground wasn't fun anymore.

When he looked over next, their lips were locked together and Sam had to clench his fingers around the metal of the jungle gym to keep himself from screaming at her to stop, to leave his brother alone, that it was supposed to be him his brother kissed.

It took him a moment to realize what he'd just thought and by the time he did, Dean was giving the girl his number and telling her which motel to find him at. Sam was just close enough that he could hear her say she was free on Friday after school. He wondered if he could make them leave before then.

When they got back to the motel, Sam took a shower, trying to mull over what he'd been thinking and feeling at the park. Thinking that Dean was supposed to kiss him was wrong, he knew that. Clearly, he was some sort of freak. There was no way Dean felt the same way about him. He spent his time with and gave his attention to girls that he met at the park or at school or at the gas stations or diners.

_Girls._

Not boys. Not his brother.

Of course, he paid attention to Sammy. He spent time with him. They watched movies together, they went to the mall together, but the girls were still present, even then. During the movies, Dean would only comment on how the girls looked, on how much the costumes revealed, on the magazines he found in the backseat of the car. When they were at the mall, he'd give each one that stared at him a smile and often flirted with them in the food courts. No matter how much Dean said Sammy came first, Sam was beginning to realize just how untrue this was.

That night when he got out of the shower and went to bed, he fantasized about sleeping in his brother's arms like he had when he was a wide-eyed little kid who had nightmares about things that happened to be real. He pretended that Dean felt the same way about him. He pretended that this wasn't strange or weird or abnormal in any way and that, just this once, he wasn't a freak.

The salad in front of him was made of wilting lettuce leaves, soggy raw onions, bits of moldy grated cheese, and stale croutons. Sam stabbed a few pieces of lettuce with his fork and held it up in front of his face. He inspected the bite he'd just made for himself and watched as small drops of the sour dressing he'd poured over it plopped back down onto the porcelain plate containing the rest of his meal.

Knowing he was stalling and finding that he didn't care all that much, Sam lowered his fork and glanced to his left where his brother was seated, a bacon cheeseburger in front of him. He turned his gaze to his father, sitting across from him, his meal a small pizza. John Winchester was reading a newspaper. Dean Winchester was making eyes at a girl across the diner. No one noticed Sam Winchester scrape the limp lettuce leaves off the tines of his fork and sit back in the booth to gaze out the window at the cars zipping by.

Sometimes, when Sam was waiting for his brother to finish flirting and his father to finish eating, he would pick one of the cars that passed and imagine himself inside it. He would imagine himself leaving the hunting life, taking Dean with him, and going on a roadtrip across the United States for fun instead of in an effort to destroy something supernatural or try to find whatever it was that had murdered their mother. He imagined what he'd say to his father, finally standing up to him after too long of staying silent. He imagined smiling with the windows rolled down and the wind moving through his hair and Dean's. He imagined never feeling the need to skip a meal ever again.

It was only in these fantasies that Sam found he was truly happy.

"Hey, Sammy, you done eating?"

Sam blinked.

The voice that pulled him from his daydreams belonged to the person that prevented them from happening: his father. He uncrossed his arms, pushed himself up in the booth and glanced down at his salad. He'd moved the soggy mess around enough that it looked like he'd eaten more of it than he had, though not enough that his father wouldn't ask him why he'd not had more. Before he could say anything, however, Sam gave a tight-lipped smile and said, "It wasn't very good. I think everything in it was processed."

"Salads aren't processed, Sam," Dean said next to him, pulling his eyes away from the redhead he'd been gazing at for the past ten minutes to address his brother. "That's why they're called salads."

"Dean, be nice to your brother," John's voice sounded calm, but it was a warning.

Dean shot one last nasty look in Sam's direction, but said nothing else.

Sam glared at up at Dean, but he didn't say anything either. They were nearly the same height now, but Dean was still a little taller than him, enough that when he was upset he could assert his authority and, for whatever reason, Dean always seemed upset anymore. It'd taken Sam awhile to figure out that he shouldn't respond to his brother's provocations. All it did was egg him on, and they'd only end up screaming at each other. Sam did that enough with his father. He didn't want to do it with his brother, too.

Ever since Sam had turned twelve, Dean had been going through moods like this. It usually took him a few weeks to resort back to normal, but during the time he was angry, he was anything but kind to Sam.

_What happened, Dean? _Sam thought, following the brother in question and his father out of the diner and towards the car.

Frankly, he didn't want to know. He was certain he'd done something, but he didn't know what. He'd been going over it in his head for two years now and he couldn't come up with anything that would explain his brother's frequent mood swings. He sighed. He liked to think he'd figure it out eventually, but as Dean sat in the front of the Impala with their father instead of the back, something told him he wasn't going to, not without help.

"You _really _couldn't find a better place to stay?" Dean didn't even bother to hide his disgust as they walked into a musty western-themed motel room that they'd been warned had no AC and only cold water in the shower. The receptionist at the front desk had tried to make this sound like a good thing, but as much as anyone said they'd like a cold shower on a hot day, the truth was, once they got into the shower, they wanted the water to be warm.

"You're gonna be living here for the next week, while I go clean up a mess in the town over," John said, turning into their commanding officer again if only with his voice.

Sam bristled and clenched his teeth. At times, it was just the way his father spoke that made him want to disobey his orders or say something against him, but he'd learned to keep his mouth shut when John had backhanded him for swearing. He'd cried and Dean had iced the bruise that formed on his cheek, telling him it was alright and it wouldn't happen again, but Sam was certain that was just his brother's reassurance talking. He'd seen John hit Dean more than once and Sam was sure that if he didn't toe the line, it'd be him his father was hitting instead. A part of him wanted it to be him that his father hurt, but another larger part just hated him for touching Dean at all.

_Four more years, Sam, _he told himself squaring his shoulders and dropping his duffle bag on the bed furthest from the door and John. _Four more years and then you can go to college and you won't have to see him ever again. _

Sam loved John. He was his father. But the truth was he couldn't live with him, he couldn't take his crap, not the way Dean could, and now that he knew he truly could get away from him, he was going to do everything in his power to achieve that dream.

Back by the door, Sam could hear John and Dean fighting. Dean wanted to go with him to help get rid of whatever it was in the next town. John wouldn't tell him what it was only that it was dangerous and he had to stay and "take care of Sammy". Dean argued that he'd almost died more times than both of them combined and he doubted that this was too dangerous for him. John retorted that he couldn't lose his son like he'd lost his wife. That shut Dean up, but, even from this distance with his back turned, Sam could feel the frustration radiating off his brother.

"There's two hundred bucks in there," Sam heard John say as he handed his brother an envelope full of money, something he'd been doing all their lives whenever he left them. "That _should _be more than enough for a week. If you run out, there's a bar with a pool table two blocks down." John didn't say it and Dean didn't either, but they all knew that their father expected Dean to hustle pool or play poker, whether or not they ran out of money. Sam silently added this to the list of reasons his father was one of his least favorite people.

Sam waited until he heard the door click shut before he turned. Dean was still standing with the envelope in his hand, staring blankly at the door. Sam swallowed and opened his mouth to say something to Dean, to reassure him that staying here in this dingy motel room really wasn't that bad, but he couldn't think of anything to say that wasn't a lie. Instead, he turned back around, dug through his duffle bag for a moment, and pulled out a water bottle. He took a long swig, changed into a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt, before he mumbled, "I'm going for a run," and pushed himself out the door.

The fresh air of wherever they were was nice after being cooped up in a car for five hours. He hadn't been paying attention to where they were going, so he wasn't entirely sure where they were, but he was guessing it was California, since the weather was perfect and there were palm trees and other tropical plants lining the sidewalk he was running down.

He turned a corner and fantasized about running away here with Dean. He imagined them living in the apartment complex he'd seen down the street, he imagined his brother working as a mechanic at the autoshop he passed.

He imagined himself going to school and getting a degree in the subject he wanted instead of becoming a hunter and carrying on the family legacy.

It was only a pipe dream, Sam knew, but even so, he allowed himself a small smile.

The first time Sam Winchester sliced open his own skin on purpose was after a hunt. To be more specific, it was after a fight with his father after a hunt.

They'd been hunting a shapeshifter and had followed it into a warehouse in the dead of night. Sam knew it was a bad idea, told their father to wait until the morning, said this was a suicide mission, but John hadn't listened. He'd told Sam to shut his mouth and do as he was told, be a good son. Sam didn't. He protested all the way to the warehouse, grumbled as John gave them the rundown of the plan for killing the shifter, but once that they were actually hunting the thing, he was quiet. He was angry, upset at how this was going, but he didn't want to get himself or his family killed.

John had left Dean and Sam near the entrance to the warehouse, telling them to only attack if the shifter tried to get out of the place. Sam had hissed that there was more than just one exit, but their father had disappeared into the darkness where light from the moon shining through the windows couldn't reach before his youngest son had even finished speaking.

"He never listens to me," Sam growled, his fingers, wrapped around the bone handle of the silver knife, tightening. "He's gonna get himself killed because he never listens to me."

Dean didn't respond. Sam didn't expect him to. He knew his brother didn't always agree with what their father said, but, unlike Sam, he never questioned him. He always figured that he was doing what was best for the three of them. A part of Sam knew that the other reason Dean never fought with their father was because Sam was _always_ fighting with him. Dean always found himself having to pull them away from each other's throats. The last thing he wanted was to add to the mess that was their family. Of course, Dean didn't think their family was a mess. He thought that if Sam just did as he was told, things would be fine.

At least that's what Sam thought was going on in his brother's mind.

They'd been slowly inching away from the door and more towards the center of the warehouse, their knives held out in front of them, since their father left. Or rather, Dean had. Sam had only been following him because the last thing he wanted was for Dean to be out of his sight when there was a dangerous creature somewhere in the building they were currently standing in.

But, in the end, it turned out that Dean being close didn't matter.

Out of nowhere the shifter appeared. Dean angled his body so he was in front of Sam, but the shifter moved around him, rushing towards the younger of the two boys with a knife. Sam was frozen with fear, wondering how much it would hurt when the silver blade buried itself between his ribs. He closed his eyes, preparing himself for that pain, but it never came. Instead, a cry of agony echoed throughout the warehouse. Sam's eyes snapped open just in time to watch his brother crumple to the concrete floor and the shifter vanish once more.

For a moment, Sam was frozen, though this time in shock. It'd all happened so fast, he wasn't even sure it'd happened at all, until Dean groaned and that was when he realized his brother was hurt.

His brother was hurt bad.

In the next moment, he'd dropped beside Dean and had begun pawing frantically at his brother. He gently moved Dean's arms away from the wound and opened his blood-soaked jacket. He inhaled sharply. There was very little moonlight streaming through the windows high above the both of them, but it was enough to see that the dark stain on his brother's shirt was spreading quickly.

"Dad!" he screamed, not really thinking, forgetting, for the moment, all about the shifter and the fact that if he yelled too much it might come at him again anyway. Even if he hadn't been paralyzed with fright and managed to kill the creature, their father wouldn't have come with the way he was calling. They'd come up with special words to shout if it was them instead of whatever creature they were hunting, but in that moment, watching Dean curl in on himself, gasping and struggling to keep any more blood from exiting his body, Sam forgot all about it.

"Sammy?" Dean gasped out, wrenching the younger boy from his thoughts. "Sammy, are you okay? Is it still alive?"

Sam's fingers fumbled around in the dark for Dean's and when he found them, he gripped them tight, the sound of his brother's wet gasping breaths the only thing slipping past his wall of panic.

"'M fine, fine, you're not, you're not fine."

His hand hovered over the wound, blood leaking on to his fingertips with each fall of Dean's chest. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew Dean had asked him a second question, but that seemed completely unimportant compared with what was happening in front of him. More than once Sam had seen his brother in a state such as this, but that didn't mean he was used to it. He would never be used to it. Dean was his brother, the one person he felt more for than just a fluttering heartbeat of love and every time he got close to losing him, he was reminded of just how lost he would be without him.

Dean grimaced at clutched at Sam, who was listening to the sounds of the quiet warehouse. It was too quiet. He struggled to keep himself silent, struggled not to cry for their father again, but the panic in his chest was rising. Every second they sat here Dean was losing blood, bleeding out. _Dying_. He couldn't just sit here and do nothing.

He swallowed thickly, hands twisting unconsciously in Dean's blood-soaked shirt. "What if it got Dad?" he whispered, eyes wide and fearful. "Or-or what if he doesn't get here in time? You need a hospital…we have to get you to a hospital." The small part of his mind that was slowly becoming the hunter he'd never wanted to be told him that they had to kill the shifter first or more people would die, but the rest of his brain was locked onto the need to get them out of this fucking warehouse and get his big brother help.

"Sammy," Dean said, shocking Sam with how weak his voice sounded, "we need to _find _Dad, okay? You have t-to help me up so we can find Dad." He struggled to get to his feet, but all that accomplished was forcing a strangled cry of pain to come from the back of his throat.

The minute Sam realized what his brother was trying to do, he launched himself at him, crying out his name, but he was a heartbeat too slow to catch his brother's fall and he winced as he watched him collapse back on the hard ground once more.

"You can't," he told him. "You're not gonna be able to walk very far." He glanced around the pitch black surrounding them and a quiet sound of fear and frustration slipped past his lips. "I could go look for him…" he began, but he didn't finish his sentence. Looking for their father meant leaving Dean alone and that was the last thing he wanted to do. He swallowed hard. He began shaking. He turned back to his brother and, sounding more like a child than ever, whispered, "I don't know what to do."

"Sammy…you have to get me to the car." Dean's fingers curled in his little brother's jacket, taking his attention away from the empty warehouse and back to his dying brother. "I know how we can get Dad and the shifter."

Sam didn't have the muscle strength to carry his brother, but he managed to support him as he listened to his brother's plan on the way to the car.

Since Dean was too weak, Sam would drive the impala through the wall of the warehouse that it was facing. Once the wall was down, he'd turn on the brights, lighting the place up. Then they could find their father, who could easily kill the shifter before they got the hell out of there and to a hospital. Sam was wondering if the impact with the warehouse wall would jar Dean to the point where he'd die of shock, but that sounded unlikely, even in his state of panic, so when Dean insisted he sit in the car with Sam, Sam's only requirement was that Dean sit in the back. The impala had no seatbelts and in his brother's current condition, he was certain Dean would fly through the windshield if he didn't have one on.

Dean all but collapsed into the back seat whereas Sam launched himself into the front. He wouldn't put it past his brother to try to convince him that he should be the one driving if only because he knew how whereas Sam wasn't even supposed to be behind the wheel for another two years at least. However, no such protest arose from his brother, which only made him panic more. Dean was truly incapacitated.

_Just remember what Dean's taught you, _he told himself as he turned the key and the impala rumbled to life. He put the car into first gear and, once he had it lined up with the warehouse, gunned the engine and hurtled through the wall, forcing the cheap metal to buckle under the thirty-year-old ton of Detroit steel.

Dean let out a cry of pain as he was jostled by the impact, making it harder for Sam to focus on the task at hand. He turned on the impala's brights and watched his father and the shapeshifter come into view. A few moments later, the shapeshifter was lying dead on the warehouse floor and Sam was scrambling out of the car, ignoring the throbbing the impact had left in his neck.

"Dad!" he screamed, sounding more than a little hysterical. "The shifter! It got Dean! It hurt him, hurt him bad! We have to hurry!"

John's face was set in a grim line as he noticed the panic in his younger son's voice. Sam led his father back to the car and once he got there, he looked into the backseat for only a moment, but it was long enough to see how hurt Dean was. Blood covered the backseat. The car was going to have to be thoroughly cleaned. However, that didn't particularly matter to either of them at the moment.

"Sammy," John said, "I need you to sit back there with Dean. Put his head in your lap and make him talk to you, keep him awake until we get to the hospital."

It seemed like a simple enough job, but as they got back on the road and John put the pedal to the floor in an attempt to get to the nearest hospital before Dean bled out, Sam realized it wasn't. Dean's eyes kept fluttering shut, his voice that had been so strong and sure when this hunt had started, had become weak and slurred.

"G-guess I wasn't quick enough this time…eh, Sammy?" he said, smiling weakly.

Sam squeezed Dean's hand tightly, his own smile wobbling. He wanted to cry, but he couldn't, his mind was locked up and terrified. _Shock, _the rational part of himself noted, but this hardly registered. He was too busy clinging to his brother's blood-slicked fingers and saying in as steady a voice as he could muster, "You're gonna be fine, jerk."

Dean's smile widened and he managed to gasp out, "Bitch," before they arrived at the hospital and a small group of doctors was struggling to pull him from Sam's grasp. Sam tried to untangle himself from Dean, he really did, but he couldn't make himself move. His grip on Dean's hand was too tight, his throat thick with unshed tears and the stench of blood clogging up his airways. Somehow, Dean was pried away and Sam managed pushed himself out of the car and into the hospital just in time to watch his brother be put on a gurney and rushed down the hall to a pair of swinging double doors that he could only guess led to the operating room.

The doors had just barely swung shut when John had grabbed Sam by the upper arm and dragged him to a corner just outside the hospital.

"What happened?" he asked, his voice stern.

"The shifter came out of nowhere and stabbed Dean," Sam answered, surprised at his father's actions, wondering what he'd done to warrant them.

"No, that's not what I meant. What happened to make it so Dean was stabbed?"

Sam's brows knit themselves together. "I just told you what ha –"

"Was he protecting you?" John asked. He sounded frustrated now.

"Yeah, of course, he was," Sam replied, puzzled.

The conversation ended there and John went back inside. Sam tried to figure out what had just happened, but when he couldn't he followed his father back through the automatic doors into the hospital waiting room.

It was almost three hours before a doctor told them Dean was recovering in the ICU and would be awake in a little less than an hour. It was even longer before another doctor told them that he was awake _and _they could go see him.

For having just been stabbed less than twelve hours earlier, Dean looked pretty good. He was hooked up to an IV and a heart monitor, and was on oxygen, but other than that, he seemed fine. Lucid, despite the anesthetics he'd no doubt been given before the surgery.

"Heya Sammy," Dean said weakly from his place on the bed, still somehow managing to smile in a way that made him look stronger than he actually was.

Sam forced a smile onto his face, struggling to make it look like he hadn't spent most of his time waiting for Dean to get out of surgery in the bathroom crying, but he failed miserably and this was only punctuated by the fact Dean said, "Come on, man, you look worse than me."

"You wouldn't if you'd been more careful."

John Winchester's voice cast a dark cloud over the light mood that had been rising in the hospital room only moments before. Sam stepped closer to his brother's bed and took the seat at Dean's side. He took his brother's hand, being careful of the clip on his finger and the IV in his wrist and pretended that this didn't mean more to him than just a way to comfort Dean after his recent operation.

"If I'd done anything else, Sammy would've gotten hurt," Dean explained. Sam looked up. The strong boy he'd seen before was gone. Dean suddenly looked exhausted and in pain.

"You should've thought of a way to get you _and _Sam out of there. Do you have any idea how much these hospital bills are going to cost me? We can't keep doing this, Dean!"

"Can we not do this right now?"

Sam was the one who had spoken. His voice was even and calm, but he was barely holding back his anger.

John rounded on Sam, his stare deadly, promising a yelling match once they got back to the motel. Sam's expression was equally challenging, but neither of them said much of anything else to one another while they stayed with Dean. For the next couple hours, it was Dean who spoke, talking to Sam, telling him about the girls at school and Sam struggled not to let jealousy overtake him and force him to walk out of the room. It was just when he was becoming unsure he could contain his anger or his envy any longer that a nurse came in to administer another dose of morphine to his brother. Dean fell asleep shortly after that and, without saying a word, both John and Sam got up, left the room, and drove back to the motel.

John slammed the door shut behind them and Sam turned on his heel, his hands clenched into fists and yelled, "You didn't have to do that! He was just protecting me! That's his job, remember? You're the one that's told him that ever since I was born! It's _not _his fault that the shifter stabbed him because _he was trying to protect me_!"

"Are you saying it was my fault, then?" John asked, not missing a beat, seeming completely unsurprised his son had started the fight. "Are you saying that because I told him to keep you safe it's my fault he can't think up how to get you both out of a dangerous situation?"

"Yes!" Sam screeched, angry tears welling in his eyes. "You make him think my life is above his, even though it's not! You've made him think that he's _worthless_ when compared with me! How can you think that's in any way alright?"

John started saying something else, but Sam wasn't listening. He was crossing the motel room, going to the bathroom, slamming the door shut and locking it and leaning against it and struggling not to start sobbing because he had only just realized how true his words were. Dean _did _think he was worthless. He _did_ think that Sam's life was above his own, and if that wasn't proof that Dean was someday going to die because of him he didn't know what was.

As he stood there, breathing heavily in an attempt to keep himself from breaking down, Sam realized two things: he needed to leave the hunting life, not only because he didn't want to be a hunter, but because he couldn't let Dean give his life for his own _and_ he still had his silver bone-handled knife in his back pocket. He wondered how the doctors at the hospital hadn't noticed that when they were there and before he really knew what he was doing, he was taking it out, rolling up his sleeves, and dragging his blade across his skin over and over and over again. It wasn't until his arm and the white porcelain sink beneath it were covered in his shimmering crimson that he realized what he'd done and he dropped the knife in shock.

He grabbed the toilet paper and unrolled too much of it before he pressed it to his arm. The cuts stung as he began wiping his skin, struggling to clean himself. He eventually gave up and began cleaning the sink instead. He stuck his arm under the tap and more of the blood that had already dried on his skin swirled down the drain with the pink water.

By the time Sam left the bathroom, an hour had passed and John was lying on the couch, the TV on, a bottle of beer in his hand. He didn't notice his son coming out of the bathroom, pressing his left arm against his chest to keep his father from seeing what he'd done to it. He never noticed. And when Dean was released from the hospital two weeks later, he didn't notice both because by then most of the cuts were dry scabs and it was much easier for Sam to hide them by wearing one of his long-sleeved plaid button-ups on his torso and a smile on his lips.

It took Sam a little longer than that to realize that he enjoyed the feeling of the blade slicing his skin. It took him even longer to figure out why.

It took away his anger, it took away his hurt. It was as though the blade opened up the place where his emotions were stored and every drop of blood that splashed onto the bathroom counter, the tiled floor, the porcelain sink was an unwanted emotion that Sam had finally, _finally _figured out how to dispose of.

All it took was a blade and a locked door.


End file.
